Excerpt
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus, married a daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 1662. The wedding took place at Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies closed with a great feast. According to the usages of the chiefs, Passaconaway ordered a select number of his men to accompany the newly-married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn there was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit expressing a desire to visit her father's house was permitted to go, accompanied by a brave escort of her husband's chief men. But when she wished to return, her father sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her husband, and asking him to come and take her away. He returned for answer that he had escorted his wife to her father's house in a style that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her father must send her back, in the same way. This Passaconaway refused to do, and it is said that here terminated the connection of his daughter with the Saugus chief.—Vide MORTON'S New Canaan.
WE had been wandering for many daysThrough the rough northern country. We had seenThe sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lakeOf Winnepiseogee; and had feltThe sunrise breezes, midst the leafy islesWhich stoop their summer beauty to the lipsOf the bright waters. We had checked our steeds,Silent with wonder, where the mountain wallIs piled to heaven; and, through the narrow riftOf the vast rocks, against whose rugged feetBeats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,Where noonday is as twilight, and the windComes burdened with the everlasting moanOf forests and of far-off waterfalls,We had looked upward where the summer sky,Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun,Sprung its blue arch above the abutting cragsO'er-roofing the vast portal of the landBeyond the wall of mountains. We had passedThe high source of the Saco; and bewilderedIn the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atopOf old Agioochook had seen the mountains'Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thickAs meadow mole-hills,—the far sea of Casco,A white gleam on the horizon of the east;Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;Moosehillock's mountain range, and KearsargeLifting his granite forehead to the sun!
And we had rested underneath the oaksShadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shakenBy the perpetual beating of the fallsOf the wild Ammonoosuc. We had trackedThe winding Pemigewasset, overhungBy beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,Or lazily gliding through its intervals,From waving rye-fields sending up the gleamOf sunlit waters. We had seen the moonRising behind Umbagog's eastern pines,Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beamsAt midnight spanning with a bridge of silverThe Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls.
There were five souls of us whom travel's chanceHad thrown together in these wild north hillsA city lawyer, for a month escapingFrom his dull office, where the weary eyeSaw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets;Briefless as yet, but with an eye to seeLife's sunniest side, and with a heart to takeIts chances all as godsends; and his brother,Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retainingThe warmth and freshness of a genial heart,Whose mirror of the beautiful and true,In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmedBy dust of theologic strife, or breathOf sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore;Like a clear crystal calm of water, takingThe hue and image of o'erleaning flowers,Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon,Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,And tenderest moonrise....